by Maia Starr
Out the windows, all I could see was water; all I could hear was rain.
How strange, I thought, to be brought somewhere just miles away from the island I was floating on and it have a completely different atmosphere. The island was so small that it was almost entirely enveloped by the rainfall.
“That wasn’t the plan,” she said softly and touched my hand. “Keeping you girls hidden.”
“Good to know,” I said. I stared down at her slender fingers and pat her hand twice before moving mine away. “He just works on his own then?”
She scoffed. “Who knows. Probably something Pash put him up to. She…” she looked at me with a bashful smirk then and then shrugged. “She kind of hates humans.”
“Huh… Well, you can tell her that I’m not crazy about being here, either,” I said, and she chuckled again.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she said sweetly.
I let out a teasing laugh and said, “Yeah, I bet!”
She smiled at that, and we both watched as Scashra came back into the room, slipping a tiny chip into the side of a tablet-like device. He set the device into my hands, and I began reading her file.
She was, by all accounts, perfectly healthy.
I set my jaw, wondering if Alecia would know what to do if she were here.
“Well?” Scashra said impatiently, trying to read my expressions.
“Well, what?” I said, and before I could get any other words, tell him I would have to study her samples before I could get anything conclusive out of her, we both twisted around at the sudden black liquid that was pooling out of her mouth.
Amlodesh coughed and gagged on the liquid and Scashra began yelling for one of their healers.
She grabbed onto Scashra’s hand and looked up, wide-eyed at him she choked and hissed against the liquid in her mouth. “Scashra,” the girl gurgled through the liquid in her throat and gripped onto his hands.
Three healers raced into the room, and I took a step back, grabbing my samples and watching as they frantically rubbed ointments across her throat and belly to no avail.
I’d read about this, before coming here. The problem with the females—the eniwan. This was how they went: died. A black darkness that seeped through their bodies until they were nothing.
“It’s okay,” Scashra comforted her, his trembling voice betraying his brotherly instincts to protect her.
She gripped his hands so firmly that his fingers turned white under the tips of her fingers. “Congratulations.” The word was gargled, but unmistakable.
“What?” He said, on the verge of tears now. “On… for what?” he asked, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers with shaking hands.
She looked puzzled and then shook her head with mock annoyance. She choked out the words with a smile: “The dragonling.”
“The…” Scashra searched her eyes. He looked up at me as though I could solve the mystery of her sentence and then his eyes met his sister’s once more. “The baby?”
She exhaled with effort, the black liquid spilling from her full lips. “T’amula,” she said: idiot. “Pash.”
“Pash?” he repeated with narrowed brows.
Scashra looked stricken, even more-so as Amlodesh weakly cheered, “I knew…” and then her words went to nothing. Her face falling limply in his hand: the veins under her skin flooding with blackness and glowing under her skin like a star.
The navy-scaled shifter held his sister's face and stared forward numbly.
“Stay with her,” he said, and with that, he was gone.
Chapter Six
Scashra
The council room was as empty as I had ever seen it.
But this time it wasn’t me slipping in, hoping for an audience with my ever-present father. This time it was just me. Waiting.
The breaths were slipping in and out of my lungs like lightning, rapid and hot. My whole body was vibrating with sick. I stared out the immense windows at the fog that swept over Renden island, like somehow the world knew not to be cheerful: that she was gone.
I didn’t turn, not even when my father stepped in behind me.
He didn’t say a word: just watched me watching the clouds.
We stayed like that for what felt like hours but must have only been a handful of minutes. Until Fenris entered the room in haste. I swallowed hard, and my breathing sped up once more as he walked up next to me, looking in between my father and myself.
My eyes glistened with fury as he looked into them.
The Dendren looked at me, finally, and said, “What’s the status of the breeders?”
Not ‘how’s my daughter?’ and not a word about Pash.
He was a coward, my father.
“Recovered,” I said tersely, staring at the dark gray clouds that scored the sky.
He nodded, pleased so long as he could stay blissfully in the dark about Amlodesh.
“Have a placement ceremony set up for tomorrow,” he said quietly, unwilling to ask me the question that was plaguing him.
Fenris looked between us again like we were madmen and grabbed me by my shoulders, turning me forcefully away from the window. “How is Amlodesh? I can’t reach anyone.”
“Dead,” I said, and the word almost sent me crashing down into a wild fury.
Fenris let out a screeching bellow: echoing through the hollow council chamber so tortured that the timber of it would stay with me forever.
My father stood there, useless without someone telling him what to do, and then he spun on his heel and headed for the door.
Fenris fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands, and suddenly I was right back where I was when our mother died. The bearer of bad news.
I swallowed the sob that was edging up my throat, unsure if I should leave him. The Dendren made his way toward the door and stopped as Fenris’ mate stood to the left of the towering double doors.
She had dark skin and tender, beautiful eyes. I’d met her in passing only a couple of times. Fenris and I hadn’t been on good terms, so getting to know her wasn’t a priority. But at that moment, I was jealous of him.
Someone would come to his aid. When I left this room, she would sweep in and tell him everything would be alright, and he would believe her.
That was something I didn’t have.
“Father,” I called to him, and he turned in surprise at my address. We were to refer to him as Dendren at all times, family or not.
He turned with his wise, tired eyes and nodded toward me.
I licked my lips, now laser-focused as I enunciated, “Where’s Pash?”
He looked at me curiously then and lowered a brow. Then something seemed to click, and he gave a slow nod as he said, “She’s in the gardens.”
I didn’t remember leaving the buildings after that. My body took over and let my mind rest, my body morphing to my full form. I spread my wings out and sped to the gardens: sprawling fauna and flora down by the mainland.
My body stretched through the obstacle course my father had set in place: the sky a training ground for his warriors. Narrow rings lined the path to the gardens, and I flattened my body to race through them, never missing one.
When I reached the gardens, I felt exhausted: my head spinning in a crowd of emotions: fury ranking in the top now. It didn’t take long to find her, my love.
She was standing with Illox, holding his hand and wrenching away as she saw me near. I looked down at her clothes: a pale pink shirt that clung to the smallest, roundest belly.
My breath sped up, and I watched a look of terror wash over Illox’s face as he quickly took to the sky without her.
You’d better run.
“You lied to me,” Pash spat, holding her hand up to stop me as I marched toward her.
I reached her and grabbed her by the shoulders, squeezing until I couldn’t feel my hands anymore: my eyes filling with tears and a wild rage crawling up my throat as I pictured the black ink spilling out of Amlodesh’s mouth.
�
�You’re pregnant?” I whispered out with such pain that I could barely stand to hear my own voice.
Pash looked up at me with calculated, fearful eyes as they traced back and forth from mine. She tried to broaden her shoulders and loosen herself from my grasp but I only squeezed harder.
“You told me the breeders were dead,” she spat back, seeming just as furious as I was. “Now I hear they’ve been released to Renden!”
I let her go, shoving her backward and watching her stumble as I fumed, “And you told me you’d be mine when I returned.”
“Then I guess we’re both liars.” Her words were venomous as she literally spat toward me.
I turned from her, overwhelmed by my anger and needing a release. Pash shifted, only halfway, letting out her beautiful, feathery wings and vaulted toward me. Now I was the one being shoved.
“I had the opportunity to test whether I could conceive,” she said. “You should be happy for me.”
My eyes went wide then, and she fluttered backward, leading me into a garden maze: high walls of green and purple trees that we could both get out of as easily.
“I’m elated,” I hissed. “Can’t you tell?”
She lurched forward once more and tried to touch my hand, but I ripped it away.
“I’m not concerned with you any longer,” I seethed through clenched teeth.
“This is all I ever wanted,” she said, now on the verge of tears. Real or fake, I couldn’t be sure. “And you can’t even muster up a smile. You really are a selfish prick; you know that?”
I felt heat tense in my stomach, and I pierced a stare through her that made her twitch. “Should I? Should I be happy for you?” I enunciated. “You would have eight humans murdered for their ability to get pregnant when all along you could do the same?” My eerily calm tone turned into outright screaming by the end of my sentence.
For her sake, I needed to get away from her.
“What should you care what the humans feel?” she yelled back, her blue eyes darkening. “I thought you were on my side, always, Scashra! Otherwise, I never would have done this!”
“You wanted them dead!”
She shook her hand and threw her hand out in front of her. “Say what you’re really mad about!”
“You!” I yelled. “Fucking Illox!”
She winced at that and fixed a lock of long, silky hair behind her ear, willing to accept her scold.
“You,” came another sharp jab. “Using me.”
Pash swallowed, and her heaving breaths began to slow as she carefully began walking toward me. I went to speak but snapped my mouth shut, and she gave me a stare that was suddenly sweet and tempered.
Conniving.
“What?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Please, Scashra. We used to tell each other everything.”
I cocked a brow at that and shook my head in disgust. “Is that right? How about we try this. How long have you been with Illox?”
“A year,” she sighed.
“A year?” I repeated in shock. All this time I’d be fawning over her, and she was already claimed by someone else. I’d just been too stupid to see it. I laughed miserably to myself and shook my head.
She took a long breath in and shared, “You should be happy that I can have dragonlings.”
I was shocked. That was her argument?
“Excuse me?” I asked, incredulous.
“I said…” she began nervously. “If we’re to be together, then you should be happy that I’m one of the eniwan who can still have children. How could I ever have been worthy of being your chosen if I couldn’t give you children?”
Her eyes looked sad then, and it only filled me with more anger.
“So you did this for me then?” I raged. “The audacity… that you think we would ever be together now? After this? After you betrayed me?”
“Scashra,” she snipped at me. “I said I would be yours when you became Dendren, not when you came back!”
“No,” I said sharply, “When I came back was the entire… deal.”
“I said when you were Dendren!” she screamed, holding a protective hand over her belly.
I looked down at it, and my eyes went wide once more: hands trembling in fury. “I’m not… in line… for the throne.”
“Don’t be so blind, Scashra! The king wants to hold you back in the council room tomorrow. Why do you think that is? He already told me he’s choosing you to be his heir.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why over Fenris?”
“Because you aren’t with a human,” she snapped. “No one creating a half-breed can be a king. The only way Fenris can take the throne is if you, the Dendren, and Amlodesh all die.”
A rush of numbness shot through my center, and I looked up at her as though I’d already forgotten.
“Well then he’s one down already,” I said.
Pash’s eyes twitched, and she searched my eyes, shaking her head no. My lip began to shake, and she breathed, “Not Amlodesh?”
“Get away from me,” I said tersely as I turned away from her.
I could hear her crying in the maze but couldn’t bring myself to turn around. She used me. The whole time she’d been with Illox: probably tried to con him into killing those girls as well, and when he wouldn’t, she came to me.
Her willing slave.
Chapter Seven
Chloe
I couldn’t stay in the hospital room any longer, even though Scashra had asked me too. Sitting there with her body was too much for me. I just kept picturing Alecia.
I wondered if she had suffered a similar fate: wondered if she was taken here and succumbed to the same poison that was affecting the eniwan.
Logically, I knew that didn’t sound right. But the thought still haunted me.
Without thinking, I wandered out to the lush green valley below the glowing, purple building. I steered clear of the large stream coming from the waterfall above, but happily paced the area outside of it and let the rain wash over me.
The water was refreshing and warm on my skin. At the edge of the valley was a small forest that, if you walked through it, led to the edge of the island cliff.
I could hear some commotion in the forest and, against my better judgment, I began to walk toward it.
The whole night sky had filled with a dense fog that stopped almost completely when I reached the edge of the forest. Heading in, I could hear the rain hitting the tops of their strange trees: stumps of thick bark that spread out into bulbous leaves, like hard orbs on the ends of branches.
Crickets, or whatever the Cadir equivalent was, could also be heard sounding throughout the forest.
Stepping in further, I could see Scashra, heavily armored as he had been before. He stood in front of one of the trees, his black hair damp and matted to his skin: face pale but flushed in his cheeks.
I went to say something but stepped back as I watched him start to furiously punch the tree, scraping his fists against the sharp bark and screaming out a furious battle cry to no one.
The crackling bellow made me go stiff.
I licked my lips awkwardly and listened to his cries, suddenly feeling worse now than I did before. He was Parduss… but even they could feel loss.
His meltdown continued, and I watched him: his angled jaw and sad face drawing me closer to him until I couldn’t stay quiet any longer.
“I feel I should say something before this gets too awkward,” I said, hoping it sounded at least somewhat charming.
I stood with my hands behind my back, foot stretched out behind me, tapping my toe against the wet ground.
Scashra looked over at me with tears in his eyes and quickly wiped his face on his sleeve, breathing out in frustration.
“Your hands are bleeding,” I said, pointing to them from afar.
We could hear lightning crackling off in the distance, and I shuddered at the overpowering sound.
Scashra set both of his palms on the tree in front of him an
d bent far over so that the top of his head was resting against the bark.
I swallowed nervously and walked over to him, setting a gentle hand on his arm. “Are you okay?” I asked, stupidly. I was never very good at things like this.
“No,” he said, toneless.
“I know the feeling,” I offered. “What’s wrong?” I asked and then gave a long pause. “Spaceship ransacked?”
Scashra drew his brows together in a deep frown and looked over at me curiously.
“Alien species take you against your will?” I teased, smiling a little bit.
“No,” the shifter stood upright then and stifled a laugh, against his will I was sure.
“Aw, well, if you know anyone who has, I can definitely sympathize.”
His thin, pointed lips drew into a small smile, and my expression fell. “I’m sorry about your sister,” I breathed out carefully and then pulled him into a strange, soft embrace. I wrapped my arms around him and drew his head into the crook of my neck. He was all but crouching to make the hug happen, but he seemed willing to give it a try anyway.
My neck felt warm with his skin pressed against it. Suddenly, it was getting harder to tell myself it didn’t feel amazing to have him this close to me.
“You’re being too kind to me,” he said after some time, pulling away just enough to stand upright once more. He looked down at me, and I felt my face go warm.
He was as arousing and sexy as I had ever seen him. I shrugged, trying to push the feelings aside.
“I was being sarcastic, but, sure. Kind. I’ll take it.”
He shook his head. “No, you were trying to make me laugh.”
I flushed: our bodies still pressed together, his hands now on my hips. “How are you so resilient?” he said, squinting his eyes at me.
“Believe me, I’m not,” I protested.
Scashra’s eyes flicked back and forth from mine, and all I could hear was the hum of the creatures in the forest and the dripping rain just outside of the canopy.
I looked up at the green and brown, hazel eyes of his and felt my middle go hot right in between my legs. My hand found its way to his cheek, nervously, and I pressed it flat against his smooth skin.